


in rebirth

by spacershepards



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 03:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11221944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacershepards/pseuds/spacershepards
Summary: she’s alive, and she’s breathing, and she is going to kill agent texas.





	in rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally for the rvb angst war, but i missed the deadline by nine minutes (i misread it and thought it was central time.) i was originally prompted by goodluckdetective, about ct being ressurected and hunting down tex.

2 weeks, 4 days.

She’s been keeping track. Making tally marks on the armor she ‘borrowed’ - stole is a _bit_ too harsh in this case - from a sleeping sim trooper. She wonders what happened to her armor, if _he_ took it. If someone’s wearing it now, making their own memories in it. Getting dents and scratches all over her armor.

She has bitter memories about that armor, but even more bitter ones about how she got it in the first place and how she lost it.

Now, she doesn’t look anything like Agent Connecticut.

She’s _not_ Agent Connecticut anymore, but even when she’d left the Project, she still wore the armor.

She wonders how strange she looks in dark, dusty red.  


If she took off her helmet, would she still be recognizable?

From where she’s laying, elbows digging hard into rock, a sniper rifle pressed a bit too close to her visor, the canyon seems empty. Two bases, identical, on either side. Sitting in the middle of sand-colored nowhere.

Outpost 1. “Blood Gulch.”   


She wonders how Agent Texas views it. She wonders if she considers these bases home. She wonders if the sim troopers here consider Tex an ally or an enemy or, however impossibly, a friend.

(She wonders about too much. Seems like all she does.)

It’s quiet. No birds, no voices, no wind rustling the trees. The silence feels wrong, not at all what she’s used to. On the _Mother of Invention_ , it was always too loud, people chattering, people working, metal grating. With the Insurrectionists, everyone was always too loud, working on plans to take down the UNSC, but there was always a certain hush in the air whenever they talked about the fights to come - after all, it was far more likely they would die than survive.

_She_ died.

Yet here she is.

She shakes her head ever so slightly, trying to clear the thoughts away. Sometimes they seem to drown her, suffocating. It’s far too much, too little, too harsh, too unexplainable. Too everything. She should be dead.

Stranger things have happened.

She watches the canyon, lips pressed together behind her helmet. The hours tick past. Slowly. It’s so quiet.

And then, someone in blue armor steps out of the base closest to her. They raise their arms above their head, then rush towards the tank next to their base. Waving.

Waving hello.  


She blinks.

Another person follows, light blue armor. They’re moving sluggishly, a sniper rifle in their hands. They look… familiar, like an old acquaintance or someone she saw in a dream. It’s in the way they move. She can’t tell what it is or who they are, but she knows them. Even if barely.

They used to joke about that. “Eidetic Connectic!” South would say, laughing, a little drunk, slinging an arm around one of CT’s shoulders.

Even though she didn’t have an eidetic memory, just a good one.

Just when it came to people.

She shakes her head. Again. She can’t let the thoughts get too much. She’s here to do something, and reminiscing on old friends is _not_ it.

The soldier in lighter armor starts talking to the other one. She can’t tell what they’re saying - she can’t read lips when they’re _behind armor_ , after all.

A few minutes later, someone else steps out of the base.

Black armor.

Her heart speeds up.

She’s breathing too much too fast and can’t catch it and almost knocks over her rifle trying to sit up tearing off her helmet even if just for a _second_ even if to just breathe in air even if it’s too much too fast she can’t breathe _she can’t breathe._  


It feels like a panic attack, but she hasn’t had one of those in years.

_She killed you._

She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, breathes out.

_You’re here, you’re right here, you’re alive. You’re not dead. Not dead._    


She calms, breathing.

She’s alive, and Agent Texas doesn’t know that.

Her hands curl into fists, and she releases them, and breathes. She breathes in the hot, sticky air. She carefully puts her helmet back on, making sure she doesn’t knock over the rifle. She picks it up, steadies herself, and stands.

Agent Texas won’t know _what’s_ coming.

* * *

It’s funny, because once upon a time, CT tried to save her.

She made a mistake. She didn’t save her quickly enough. She left, she ran, and she tried oh so hard to never look back. She prayed that Tex would find out sooner, would take down the Director, would end the Project before anyone else got hurt, before anyone _else_ tried to follow in CT’s footsteps.

She wanted to save Tex, and Tex killed her.

She tries not to think about the fact that Tex might not’ve known, probably didn’t. That Tex probably found out later, if at all. That Tex wouldn’t have killed her, wouldn’t have fought her at all, if she knew.

What she does know is that Tex was the reason she woke up in a shallow, unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere with no armor and no clothes.  


She was lucky to scrounge up some clothes. Lucky to get a shuttle off the planet. Lucky she wasn’t killed a second time.

She _used_ to expect to at least be given a nice funeral, laid to rest in a graveyard. her name scrawled across a tombstone, some pretty poem beneath it. She wasn’t even buried among other Insurrectionists, her grave not even marked with ‘CT.’

Maybe _he_ didn’t want to think about her. Maybe he planned to come back for her. Or maybe he took her armor and ran.

But once upon a time, CT tried to save her.

And Tex let her die.

“Church! Church! _Look_!”

_Church?_ The Director’s surname. It couldn’t be a coincidence.  


“Ugh. I’m _BUSY_ , Caboose. Go show Tucker or something.”

“But I wanna show you!”

“Can’t you see _I’m busy_?”

“Yes! But this is more important!”

They haven’t noticed her. She breathes in, breathes out, moves carefully. If they notice her, if any of them see her… everything will be _ruined_. Can’t have that. She _has_ to get to Tex before Tex realizes she’s here.

“Go show Tucker!”

“He is busy with Sister. He said ‘go bother Church.’“

“Ughhh. I’m going to fucking _shoot_ him.”

She watches the lighter-armored soldier adjust his rifle, shoulders tensing. She watches the one in bright blue armor pick up a rock half his size and carry it towards ‘Church’, watches ‘Church’ step back hurriedly.

And there’s Tex, on top of the base. Just sitting there.

How quickly could she take out the two soldiers before moving on to Tex?

Back in her Freelancer days, she would’ve bet a few seconds, less than a minute at most. But she hasn’t had the chance to really practice since… well, since before she died. And she doesn’t want Tex to notice her before she’s taken them out… since they’re sim troops, it might be harder to kill themwithout making a noise. She’s not as quick as she used to be, and if one of them screams, or makes any noise…

No, they’ll have to wait. She’ll take out their Freelancer, take out _Texas_ , and then kill them.

Or maybe she’ll let them live.

Tex didn’t let _her_ live.

She slips around towards the back of the base, her footsteps kept quiet. They can’t see her, can’t hear her, can’t notice her. None of them.

She can’t mess this up.

* * *

Perhaps Texas’ instincts have gotten soft. Perhaps she can’t hear or see as well as she used to. Or perhaps CT’s simply not as bad at this as she thought.

The air is warm. She can feel it through her armor, hot and humid. Probably getting sand in every crevice, every crack. It bothers her, but not enough for her to quit, or even stop.

Against the bright sky, Tex’s armor seems so very dark. Like an absence of light or a hole in the sky, shaped _perfectly_ like armor.  


Those two soldiers are still arguing, but their voices have merged together and she can’t hear it. ‘Church’ - the light-armored one - looks up at the base, up at Tex. His shoulders slump, his entire posture loosening ever so slightly.

She’s good at telling body language. She can tell that he’s relaxing, even if just a bit.  


She’s also good at remembering things.

After all, the Director _was_ trying to recreate Allison… so that _must_ mean ‘Church’… is _Alpha_?

It can’t be. But it has to be.

It has to be.

Not that it matters now. The Project is dead (and unlike her, there is no way it could be resurrected.) Alpha is somewhere marginally safe, albeit with a few too few sim troopers (she would’ve gone with more, make it easier to hide an A.I.)  


Tex shifts her weight, making no noise, and CT remembers fighting her. She remembers strikes and blows and sweat and blood and, when she was dying, salt. Tears.

Her eyes sting just remembering it.

However, she breathes. She breathes, and in a few minutes, it will be so very much easier to breathe.

* * *

Blood Gulch Valley seems smaller when you’re looking down at it.

She can see people, wearing colorful warm-toned armor, at the other base. Small - tiny, even. But she _can_ see them.

Perhaps her vision’s gotten better.

If Agent Texas has noticed her, she hasn’t made a sound.

Until she takes one tiny step closer, and Tex lets out a sigh.

“Simmons, how the _hell_ did you get up here?”

Tex turns around, and CT’s heart almost stops. The air seems too thick - she can practically reach out and touch her own tension, her own bitterness, her own anger. Her pain. She can practically taste it, sharp and stagnant and not the slightest bit sweet. Everything is sharper and duller at the same time, cloudy, hazy, yet unbelievably real. It’s overwhelming, and she can’t stand it.

She can’t breathe. Her hands shake.  


It takes a few seconds before everything settles.

Her hands keep shaking.

“Simmons?” Tex says, pulling out a gun. Normally, CT could identify it. Identify the make, model, the type of bullets, everything.

Now, she’s drawing a blank.

So much for ‘Eidetic Connectic.’ So much for South laughing as CT identifies every gun in the locker room, laying them out and labeling each one with who holds it. North’s sniper, Wyoming’s sniper, Colorado’s sniper, Hampshire’s sniper... So much for all that training she hammered into herself, preparing for the day she eventually had to try and kill them all if they didn’t listen to her.

All CT knows is _she’s_ holding a gun and _she’s_ alive and _she’s_ still breathing. Even if she’s on the edge of panicking.

“The _fuck_ , Simmons?”

Tex’s voice is crystal clear.

CT remembers falling into nothingness. It was nothing like how she expected dying would be.

She breathes, inhales, exhales. Inhales, exhales.

Reaches for her helmet.

Pulls it off.

It hits the floor with a thud.

She can taste Tex’s surprise. Watch as every limb loosens.

“CT? I... thought you were dead.”

“I _was_ ,” CT says, and aims her gun at Tex’s chest, hands shaking. “You killed me, _remember_?”


End file.
